27 June 2006

I just couldn't help putting this up for those of you who speak or are learning Sesotho. It's a PowerPoint document that you need to download (ho theohelisa) and run through your favourite anti-virus program, just for good measure. Or just open it online. And enjoy. U tla e fumana atereseng e latelang: http://r.masilo.free.fr/tse_ling/mahe.a.linotsi.pps

Well, you are close but not quite right. If it was a man named Sefako, it should have been `Sefako oa Menoaneng'. `Oa' is a sort of a pronoun in Sesotho that shows a person (equivalent to s/he - Sesotho does not different btn man and woman). Whereas `sa' is also pronoun-like more or less like `it'. But in Sesotho we have lots of this non-person pronouns like `tsa', `ea', `la', even `oa', etc, depending on the prefix of what is talked about.

Menoaneng is a place in this context. In Sesotho, a word that has `eng' as a suffix means a place. Therefore, it can be a village. `Menoana' are fingers. However, the whole phrase may be figurative, and actually have a totally different meaning from any of the individual words. It really does not make sense to say `fingers` hailstorm' or does it? That is the literal translation of your phrase.